90 The Past in the Present 



influences — e.g., the oxygenation, temperature, and 

 currents of the water — which, again, are subject to 

 periodic changes. Thus external changes punctuate 

 internal changes, while the latter on their part may 

 be prompting the creature as a whole to make some 

 change in its environment. 



Two extremes have to be avoided. On the one hand, 

 the eel is not moved by any intelligent awareness that 

 it must get to the sea if it is to spawn, or by any 

 memory-images of its birthplace. On the other hand, 

 the creature seems to be more than a collocation of 

 little chemical laboratories which set one another 

 going automatically and work out an effective total 

 reaction. The animal cannot work without means, 

 and we cannot know too much about the little chemi- 

 cal laboratories with their oxidations and reductions, 

 hydrations and dehydrations, solutions and fermen- 

 tations; but we must not overlook the central fact 

 of their harmonious correlation. There are chemical 

 tactics, but there is psychical strategy. There is 

 some sort of registration in the nervous system which 

 counts for something in the urge, probably giving 

 a point of endeavor to the search after conditions of 

 greater satisfaction. Such at least is our view, that 

 while the study of the chemistry of the body is in- 

 dispensable, it is not possible to give an adequate 

 account of the eel's wanderings, or of any similar 

 phenomena, without recognizing the animal as a 

 historical being which enregisters past experience in 

 a living way within itself. 



